How much does a Shopify website cost? A 2026 breakdown for small shops

Shopify's pricing page answers a narrow question: what Shopify charges. The question a shop owner is actually asking is "what will this cost me per month, all in, and what do I pay to get it built?" That needs four lines, not one.

Prices below are US, as of this writing. Shopify adjusts them occasionally, so treat them as the shape of the cost rather than a quote.

1. Shopify's own plan

There are three plans that matter for a small shop:

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)	Online card rate
Basic	$39	$29	2.9% + 30¢
Shopify	$105	$79	2.7% + 30¢
Advanced	$399	$299	2.5% + 30¢

Basic is right for almost every shop under a few hundred thousand dollars a year in online sales. The Shopify plan's lower card rate only pays for itself above roughly $30,000 a month in online revenue; below that, Basic is cheaper even after the fees.

In-person rates through Shopify POS are lower (2.6% + 10¢ on Basic). POS Lite, enough for a counter with one reader, is included. POS Pro ($89 a month per location) adds staff permissions, advanced inventory, and exchanges; most single-location shops do not need it.

The card rate is the cost people forget to compare. If you are coming from Square, you are already paying 2.9% + 30¢ online, so the processing cost is a wash. If you are coming from a florist network that takes a percentage of every order on top of a monthly fee, Shopify is a significant saving.

2. Apps

Shopify ships with more than it used to. Subscriptions, gift cards, discount codes, email marketing (Shopify Email, free to 10,000 sends a month), product search and filtering, and basic local delivery and pickup are all included or free.

What still costs money, for a typical local shop:

• Delivery date and time-slot scheduling: about $30 a month (Zapiet or similar). Needed if customers must choose a delivery day, which florists, bakeries, and caterers do.
• Reviews: free to $15 a month (Judge.me or Shopify's own app).
• Booking or event tickets: free to $20 a month, if you sell classes or appointments. For a handful of workshops a month, selling tickets as products with inventory works without an app.
• Accounting sync: $10 to $30 a month for QuickBooks or Xero.

A realistic app budget for a small shop is $0 to $60 a month. If you are above $100, something is being solved with an app that a developer could solve once.

3. Theme and design

Shopify's free themes, Horizon and Dawn, are what most small shops should use. They are fast, accessible, updated by Shopify, and more flexible than they look. Paid themes from the Theme Store are $200 to $400 one-time and add layouts and features; they can be the right call for shops with specific needs, but a paid theme is not what makes a site look good. Photography, typography choices, and restraint do that.

Design and setup is where the range opens up:

• Do it yourself: $0 and somewhere between a weekend and two months of evenings, depending on how many products you have and how particular you are.
• Freelance setup: $300 to $1,500 for theme configuration, products, and basic settings.
• Custom theme work by a developer: $75 to $150 an hour freelance, $150 to $250 at an agency. A custom section or two is a few hours; a bespoke theme is $5,000 and up.
• Full-service agency build: $5,000 to $25,000 for a small to mid-sized store, more with custom integrations.

Our Launch Shopify setup is a flat $799: design on a free theme styled to your brand, products with variants, delivery and pickup rules, payments and taxes, subscriptions and gift cards, domain and redirects, and training. Moving an existing catalogue over is a $149 add-on. Those are published prices, and current promotions are on the pricing page.

4. Keeping it running

A Shopify store does not need hosting, SSL, or security patches; those are Shopify's. What it needs is someone to update the theme when Shopify releases one, remove the app that started conflicting, swap the seasonal collections, and fix the small things that break. Owners can do all of this. Many would rather not.

If you want that handled, care plans run from around $40 a month (updates and email support) to $100 a month (about an hour of changes a month plus priority support). We wrote up what Shopify maintenance actually involves so you can judge whether to do it yourself.

Putting it together

For a small shop on Basic with one scheduling app and a care plan:

	Monthly
Shopify Basic (annual)	$29
Delivery scheduling app	$30
Care plan	$40 to $99
Total	$99 to $158

Plus card processing on sales, which you pay on any platform. One-time: $799 for the build with us, or whatever the design route you chose above costs.

Compare that with what you pay now. Shops coming off a florist network often pay more per month in fees alone, before the per-order cut. Shops on Square Online's free plan pay less per month but give up delivery scheduling, subscriptions with real flexibility, and a theme they can change. The honest comparison is in Shopify vs Square Online.

What to avoid paying for

Three things we see shops buy that they did not need: a paid theme before trying the free ones, a page-builder app ($20 to $50 a month) to do layouts the theme already does, and an "SEO app" that writes meta descriptions a person could write in an afternoon. Each is small. Together they are $100 a month for nothing.

If you want a number for your shop specifically, the package builder prices the setup, add-ons, and care plan together, or get in touch and we will look at your current bills and tell you what the switch would save.